From Dingwall to Newark via the rest of the country (....by bicycle)

In 1994 the Dingwall newspaper up in Scotland included a lengthy article headed “End of the road for renowned Dingwall-born wanderer”

The article concerned the death of 82 year-old Mr Neil ‘Jock’ Fraser who had ended his days in the Fosselands nursing home in Newark, Nottinghamshire.

During his working life of 37 years, Mr Fraser had travelled the length and breadth of England as a street knife-grinder, sharpening scissors, knives and axes as they were brought out to him in towns and villages across the land.

Along the way he made many friends, including the former Bishop of Southwell, the Rt Rev Dennis Wakeling and the Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire, Geoffrey Dear.

Such was Mr Fraser’s noteworthiness that in the early 1980s he was the subject of a half-hour tv programme, “A Tinker’s Tale”, which traced his nomadic life through the seasons.

War Service

During the Second World War Mr Fraser served in the Merchant Navy, travelling to South America – where he mined gold – and Labrador – where he hunted seals.

He returned to Britain in 1948 where he bought a tradesmen’s bicycle with a carrier on the front, and fitted two grindstones.

With tent and cooking equipment strapped to the back, he set off around England in search of work. It was a journey that was to occupy him for the next 37 years.

Retirement

In 1985, when the time came to call it a day, Mr Fraser gave his customised bicycle to the Motor and Village Life Museum at Bourton-on-the-Water. (This museum no longer exists, and the current whereabouts of Mr Fraser's bicycle are unknown).

For himself, he acquired a caravan in Southwell in Nottinghamshire where he lived for the next few years – a pace chosen, he said, for the number of ‘lovely friends’ he had made in the area.

Later he moved to a flat on Yorke Drive, Newark, before taking up residence in the Fosselands nursing home on Strawberry Hall Lane, Newark, in January 1993.

The Old Campaigner

Shortly after his arrival at the home plans were announced to close it within a year – a a casualty of council cuts – and Mr Fraser found himself at the forefront of the campaign to save the home.

He launched a petition and was pictured by the local newspaper in his wheelchair collecting signatures in Newark Market Place. (Newark Advertiser 24th September 1993, front page).

Mr Fraser’s petition did not save the home from closure, and on the day he was due to be moved to a new nursing home – South Muskham prebend in Southwell – he died. He was aged 82.